Our local playground is a bit like Disneyland. From the curved metal slide that vomits out excited preschoolers every 20 seconds, to the tunnel, the Saharan sandpit, the fountain and the zip wire, there is everything a child could want. Which is good, because we go there almost every day.
After all, what else can you do with small children in central London? There are endless birthday parties, of course, playdates, the odd foray to the Science Museum. But what you really do, almost every interminable, occasionally transcendent, day, is go to the swings.
And sometimes, as I wheel the empty Bugaboo around after my children, loaded down with scooter, sippy cups and emergency rice cakes, I reflect on just how different their childhood is going to be to mine.
Growing up in Hackney, east London, Isobel, four, and Felix, 17 months, spend their lives being ferried around – in car seats and expensive buggies. Trussed up in all-terrain gear, they sip babyccinos in cafes, nonchalantly ride taxis and potter around farmers’ markets at the weekend. They impassively skirt around dog shit and don’t flinch at sirens. In short, they are already Londoners.
In contrast, I grew up in a remote Cornish cove in a cottage just a few metres from the beach. It was all salty air and granite cliffs, 10 miles from the nearest town. A place where the sky seems to swallow you whole every time you step out the front door and where the state of the sea sets the tenor for your day.
My sisters and I spent much of our time outside – swimming in the icy water every day in the summer, walking along the cliffs, blackberrying and climbing down to perfect beaches for picnics. We didn’t have our days parcelled out in little slots. And we never, ever went to the swings.
It was the fresh-air-and-pink-cheeks childhood that we all dream of our children having. It was full of space and freedom. And, as all children do, I took it entirely for granted. Watching dolphins through binoculars from the front lawn or going out in my dad’s boat to catch fish to eat that night, it didn’t occur to me that there was another way of being a child.
My parents did once host a “city kid” when I was at primary school, as part of an initiative that gave inner-city children the chance for a break in the countryside. I pitied this girl who came to stay, who seemed as foreign as if she had come from another country. She had never seen a cow – my school friends and I tittered; what an idiot. And faced with the sea, she stood at the top of the beach and frowned in fear.
Yet now, here I am, raising two city kids of my own, the youngest of whom hasn’t yet seen a real cow himself. They get their hands black with city grime, instead of proper mud and fall asleep to the sound of police helicopters, rather than the sea wind. They don’t know that there is another option for childhood, but I do. And while they aren’t socially deprived, I occasionally wonder if they are perhaps deprived in other respects.
My daughter is currently a tomboy, who loves collecting sticks, scouring the park for them, and bringing them home like trophies. And my son’s first word was tractor, which he has only ever seen in a book. Would they be happier somewhere they could see the stars at night?
When we visit my mum, who lives in the house where I grew up, they can’t believe their luck. Last time, in fact, Isobel stagily asked, “Why is it so beautiful here, Mummy?” – a little blade to my already guilty heart.
The part of London where we live exaggerates the contrast. It’s on the periphery of a desirable neighbourhood, but our corner is still resolutely “up-and-coming”, in estate-agent speak. It’s stuffed with bearded young men in checked shirts, and pretty girls on bicycles. There are more bars and coffee shops than you could ever hope to try out, but it’s still an area that can feel, at times, grimly urban.
I can’t imagine ever letting my children out of the front door to roam freely like I did. Not when I’ve witnessed a man selling drugs at the end of our road, and the crossing near the high street has a shrine of faded plastic flowers.
I worry that they will lose their innocence far too early, becoming streetwise teenagers who roll their eyes and melt into the city to get up to no good.
And, like most boring mothers, I fret about schools. Where I grew up, everyone went to the nearest village primary school and the local comprehensive. But here, since the earliest days of Isobel’s toddlerhood, my friends and acquaintances have been engaged in an arms race. Some are paying deposits for private schools, others attend church every Sunday to secure places at church schools, while the majority have bought or rented near to a “good” school, that euphemism that denotes an outstanding Ofsted report and an almost exclusively middle-class intake. The range of options in the city, and what they seem to say about you, alternately befuddles and enrages me.
Yet, despite all of this, we have no intention of moving. I note all the contrasts with my own childhood with a pang, but London still enthralls me. My spirits rise as the Penzance train pulls into Paddington. I love bright lights, pavements slicked with rain and the idea that here you could be anyone. And our work is here. My husband works long hours and wouldn’t be able to get a similar job outside of the capital. For us, moving out of London would mean a long commute or a change of career.
The reasons aren’t just selfish either. While it’s easy to dwell on the things you lack, there are so many good things about childrearing in a city like London. I can’t imagine a better place for having a newborn, with so many people to make friends with, classes to go to and coffee shops to linger in. And, now they’re older, it’s still got plenty to recommend it – even if the opportunities for stick-gathering are scarce. We don’t go to art galleries and puppet theatres or the South Bank that often, but the possibility is always there, just a bus ride away. And I hope that sense of options at their fingertips will make my children feel energised rather than jaded.
They also take diversity for granted in a way that they wouldn’t if we lived in Cornwall. For them it’s normal to see people from all different kinds of backgrounds and faiths living side by side. The multiplicity that defines this city, and perhaps in particular the borough where we live, is their norm.
I expect the advantages of city life to become more compelling as they grow. By the time I was 14 my rural idyll, at the end of its long, twisting lane, felt like more of a prison than a paradise. I’ll admit there are things I dread about having a teenager in Hackney, but living in the sticks doesn’t prevent exposure to underage drinking and drugs, as anyone who has spent any time hanging out at a small-town bus shelter knows.
Country life doesn’t protect you from real life. A rural childhood may leave you wide-eyed a bit longer about some things, but it doesn’t confer the insulating innocence that some parents seem to hope.
For there are many kinds of freedom, not just the ones that involve surf and lungfuls of fresh air. I remember walking down the street when I first came to university in London at 18. For the first time, nobody knew my name and I could easily have been wearing my pyjamas for all anyone cared. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had.
I hope my children will take such sweet anonymity and self-direction for granted, just like I did the dolphins.